Let $K$ be a compact Lie group with complexification $G$, and let $V$ be a unitary $K$-module. We consider the real symplectic quotient $M_{0}$ at level zero of the homogeneous quadratic moment map as well as the complex symplectic quotient, defined here as the complexification of $M_{0}$. We show that if $(V,G)$ is $3$-large, a condition that holds generically, then the complex symplectic quotient has symplectic singularities and is graded Gorenstein. This implies in particular that the real symplectic quotient is graded Gorenstein. In case $K$ is a torus or $\operatorname{SU}_{2}$, we show that these results hold without the hypothesis that $(V,G)$ is $3$-large.

We study the action of a real reductive group G on a real submanifold X of a Kähler manifold Z. We suppose that the action of G extends holomorphically to an action of the complexified group and that with respect to a compatible maximal compact subgroup U of the action on Z is Hamiltonian. There is a corresponding gradient map where is a Cartan decomposition of . We obtain a Morse-like function on X. Associated with critical points of are various sets of semistable points which we study in great detail. In particular, we have G-stable submanifolds Sβ of X which are called pre-strata. In cases where is proper, the pre-strata form a decomposition of X and in cases where X is compact they are the strata of a Morse-type stratification of X. Our results are generalizations of results of Kirwan obtained in the case where and X=Z is compact.

Let $\sigma $ , $\theta $ be commuting involutions of the connected semisimple algebraic group $G$ where $\sigma$ , $\theta $ and $G$ are defined over an algebraically closed field $\underset{\scriptscriptstyle-}{k},$ char $\underline{k}$ =0. Let $H:={{G}^{\sigma }}$ and $K:={{G}^{\theta }}$ be the fixed point groups. We have an action $\left( H\,\times \,K \right)\,\times \,G\,\to \,G$ , where $\left( \left( h,\,k \right),\,g \right)\,\mapsto \,hg{{k}^{-1}},\,h\,\in \,H$ , $k\,\in \,K,g\,\in \,G$ . Let $G\,//\,\left( H\,\times \,K \right)$ denote the categorical quotient Spec $\mathcal{O}{{(G)}^{H\times K}}$ . We determine when this quotient is smooth. Our results are a generalization of those of Steinberg [Ste75], Pittie [Pit72] and Richardson [Ric82] in the symmetric case where $\sigma \,=\,\theta $ and $H\,=K$ .